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What were the top BDS victories of 2017?

The movement for Palestinian rights continues to grow across the world. (Alisdare Hickson/Flickr)

It took just four days for a world famous singer to cancel her Tel Aviv show in response to her fans’ urging her to respect the international picket line.

Lorde’s decision on Christmas Eve to pull the Tel Aviv show from her world tour – remarking that booking the gig in the first place “wasn’t the right call” – completed a successful year for the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Early on in the year, key Israel lobby groups admitted in a secret report – obtained and published in full by The Electronic Intifada – that they had failed to counter the Palestine solidarity movement, despite vastly increasing their spending.

The report outlined Israel’s failure to stem the “impressive growth” and “significant successes” of the BDS movement and set out strategies, endorsed by the Israeli government, aimed at reversing the deterioration in Israel’s position.

Similarly, in March, Israel’s top anti-BDS strategist conceded that the boycott Israel movement is winning – despite the Israeli government’s allocation of tens of millions of dollars and the formation of an entire governmental ministry whose sole focus is to combat BDS.

Speaking at an anti-BDS conference in New York, Israeli ambassador Danny Danon stated that “the BDS movement is still active and still strong. Every day, academic and religious groups, student unions and investment firms are all falling prey to boycott calls.”

“Our South Africa moment is nearing”

As Israel’s strategists and representatives panicked over their failures to stem the BDS tide, polls in the UK, Canada and the US all showed that mainstream, public support for boycott and sanctions on Israel is growing apace.

In California, the state’s Democratic Party chapter approved a resolution – without debate – that condemned Israel’s illegal settlement activities in the occupied West Bank and the denial of entry to activists who criticize the state.

It also, notably, signaled support for organizers who engage with the BDS movement and who face expanding repression on campuses and by local, state and federal legislatures.

Over the summer, the High Court in London ruled that the Conservative government acted unlawfully in trying to prevent local councils in the UK from divesting from firms involved in Israel’s military occupation, dealing a blow to Israel’s representatives seeking to criminalize the BDS movement.

Barghouti won the Gandhi Peace Award in April for his work as a human rights defender. He had been subjected by Israel to a travel ban and open threats by that state’s top ministers last year.

In March, Barghouti praised a landmark report published by the United Nations which concluded that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, drawing praise from Palestinians and ire from Israel and its allies.

Barghouti said the UN report was a sign for Palestinians that “our South Africa moment is nearing,” adding that the report was “a stark indicator that Israel’s apartheid is destined to end, as South Africa’s did.”

He remarked that the report “may well be the very first beam of light that ushers the dawn of sanctions against Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.”

Here are some of the other victories of the BDS movement in 2017, as reported by The Electronic Intifada.

Athletes, writers, chefs and artists ditched Israel

In February, professional US football players pulled out of a propaganda tour to Israel, with Seattle Seahawks player Michael Bennett announcing he would “not be used” by Israel’s government to whitewash its violations of Palestinian rights.

“I want to be a ‘voice for the voiceless,’” Bennett added, “and I cannot do that by going on this kind of trip to Israel.”

In August, nine international artists pulled out of the Pop-Kultur festival in Germany because it accepted funding from the Israeli embassy. Palestinian campaigners said the “eloquent statements from the artists stand in stark contrast to the festival’s crude attempts to falsely portray the Palestinian boycott call as directed at individual Israeli artists, shrewdly omitting the fact that the protests were clearly aimed at the Israeli government involvement.”

German media also joined in the smears, giving a platform to false accusations the boycott was an “anti-Semitic” move by “participants from various Arab nations.” But the pro-Israel spin was ably confronted by German Jewish and Israeli activists, who fully backed the boycott.

Over the summer, a group of filmmakers, artists and presenters canceled their scheduled appearances at TLVFest, Israel’s premier LGBTQ film festival in Tel Aviv, following appeals by queer Palestinian activists and boycott supporters to withdraw.

The high-profile cancellations in support of the BDS campaign prompted The Jerusalem Post to admit that while the festival “has been around for more than a decade, it has never faced a campaign this successful against it.”

Later in the fall, some of the world’s top chefs pulled out of Round Tables, an Israeli government-sponsored propaganda initiative that uses international cuisine to gloss over Israel’s image.

“The Round Tables festival is taking place while the Israeli military and Israeli settlers illegally living on stolen Palestinian land attack Palestinians during their annual olive harvest,” said Zaid Shoaibi, from PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

The group had come under heavy criticism for using funds from the Israeli government, which jails Palestinian journalists and writers in Israel and the occupied West Bank for their work.

BDS endorsed by cities, churches, political groups and unions

Norway’s largest and most influential trade union organization called for a full boycott of Israel in May, just days after the Norwegian municipality of Lillehammer passed a resolution to boycott Israeli settlement goods.

Lillehammer became the third city in Norway to call for a settlement boycott, following Trondheim and Tromsø.

The city council of Barcelona voted to uphold the right to boycott Israel in April, while condemning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, calling for an end to the Gaza blockade and ensuring that the city’s public procurement policies exclude companies that profit from Israel’s human rights abuses.

In July, the 95,000-member strong Mennonite Church USA joined a growing number of Christian denominations that have taken action to support Palestinian human rights over the last few years.

“Just as we answered the call to boycott South Africa during apartheid, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” the DSA deputy national director stated.

The largest democratic socialist organization in the United States with more than 25,000 members, DSA has seen its membership quadruple with the resurgence of left-wing politics in the US and Europe, particularly since the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.

In the UK, Jewish members of the Labour Party founded a new group – Jewish Voice for Labour – that presents a challenge to an existing Israel lobby group positioning itself as the representative of Jewish members of the party.

Jewish Voice for Labour’s founding document upholds “the right of supporters of justice for Palestinians to engage in solidarity activities, such as boycott, divestment and sanctions.”

Also in the UK, the country’s largest union for school teachers launched a boycott of HP over the technology giant’s role in the Israeli occupation.

G4S was further ostracized

The world’s largest private security company, G4S, continued to face heavy financial losses around the world as its profiteering from human rights abuses came under further scrutiny.

And the transportation board of Sacramento, California, moved to dump its security contract with G4S following work by campaigners to highlight the company’s role in rights abuses in Palestine and the US.

Last year, G4S announced that it was dropping a slate of controversial businesses, including its Israel subsidiary and juvenile detention services in the US.

The Financial Timesdescribed the move as an attempt by G4S to distance itself from “reputationally damaging work.”

But campaigners around the world vowed to maintain pressure on the company as long as it remains complicit in violations of Palestinian human rights.

Students fought

South Africa’s Tshwane University of Technology announced in December that it will respect the call for the boycott of Israeli institutions complicit in the violation and denial of Palestinian rights.

“As a progressive university in a democratic South Africa, we want to affirm that TUT will not sign any agreements or enter into scientific partnerships with any Israeli organization or institution until such time that Israel ends its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory,” the university stated, citing a decision taken by its governing council in November.

And college students across the US continued to mobilize for Palestinian rights despite increasing repression by administrations and outside Israel lobby groups.

A resolution passed by students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison voted unanimously to back a broad-based resolution calling on the university to drop its ties to companies that profit from mass incarceration, theft of indigenous land, police violence, the US-Mexico border wall, economic injustices against people of color and Israel’s human rights abuses in Palestine.

In New York, students at Fordham University brought violations of their rights to organize and assemble to court, challenging the decision by an administrator to ban Students for Justice in Palestine.

There is also a bill pending in Congress – the Israel Anti-Boycott Act – that could impose large fines and long prison sentences on companies and their personnel if they are deemed to be complying with a boycott on Israel or its settlements called for by an international organization.

A lawsuit was filed against the state of Kansas in October on behalf of a public high school math teacher, Esther Koontz, who participates in the consumer boycott of Israeli goods.

Koontz is a member of the Mennonite Church USA, which passed a resolution in July in support of divestment from companies that profit from violations of Palestinian rights.

Another lawsuit was filed against the state of Arizona in December on behalf of an attorney who contracts with the government to provide legal advice to incarcerated persons, according to the ACLU. He participates in the boycott of Israel.

But in Oregon, three separate bills impugning the BDS movement failed to get a hearing, following sustained pressure by human rights activists and faith leaders across the state.

The bills were backed by Jewish communal groups that organize nationwide efforts to combat the movement for Palestinian rights.

Activists said that the failure of the bills should encourage campaigners fighting back against similar anti-BDS measures in state legislatures and the US Congress.

Editor’s note: Additions to this post have been made since its initial publication.

It's imperative that the BDS c ampaighn also focuss on Israeli ambassadors in countries to be kicked out....arrest of the zionist leaders should now begin to happen...they should not have the privilege to move freely....

BDS Activists,
This is thrilling! The People have acted in huge numbers, especially the young people. It brought me to tears, having first heard the Palestinians plead their case to Beyond War many decades ago. Remember always what you have done. Love won. Fear lost. Carry it forward. Repeat it. This is the turning point. Momentum is on your side. The long-suffering Palestinians are finally on their way to justice. Thank you.
Therese LePage

What the BDS Movement has accomplished in just 12 years is nothing short of astonishing. Zionist hasbara (propaganda) has had more than a century in promulgating its fascist, masked as democratic, ideology. BDS has now influenced many corporations in not doing business with Israel; a multitude of artists have spoken out for, and supports, the Palestinian cause for justice; numerous unions worldwide have given support to Palestinians in a variety of ways; a number of municipalities across the globe have expressed, in material ways, support for Palestinians; university student unions across the world have encouraged, and succeeded, in having their universities/colleges divest from companies that do business with Israel, and so forth!
More recently, the Illegitimate Israeli government has created a "PR Commando Unit" in responding to what they term, "anti-Israel", i.e. the delegitimization of Israel, attacks--costing the Illegitimate Israeli government approximately 128 million dollars a year.
Through BDS, and as its influence grows stronger, one can hope there will eventually be peace in Palestine with a one-state (not called Israel) solution.